Heavy Lifting: Largest Crane in Southeast Begins Work at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton

Posted Date: 7/13/2010

It’s a big deal, but not in the traditional way.

One of the two largest cranes in the Southeast is on site at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton, where workers are using the massive machine to hoist the substantial prefabricated portions of a parking deck into place.

The 500-ton (or 1 million pounds, if you’re doing the math) crane is a Liebherr Model LTW 1400-7.1, with a potential vertical reach of 400 feet – almost the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. It has been provided by Maxim Crane Works, based in Mableton.

For the project at Tanner, the crane’s vertical reach has been set between 80 and 170 feet of main boom, with a 184-foot-long luffing jib and more than 300,000 pounds of counterweight. This combination allows the crane to lift more than 60,000 pounds 150 feet in the air.

Ten tractor trailers were needed to haul the just the crane’s boom and counterweights to Carrollton, and another crane had to be used to assemble the crane.

The crane has been erected on the Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton campus to assist with expansion of an existing parking deck. Two new levels are being added to a deck that mainly serves the hospital’s outpatient and emergency department visitors and patients. The deck has been temporarily closed while crews work on the expansion and many employees at the hospital are now using an off-site parking lot to make ample parking available in the newer deck adjacent to the hospital, near the corner of Dixie Street and Ambulance Drive.

The colossal crane will continue work on the site through late August.

For more information on the construction project at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton and to learn more about Tanner Health System, visit www.tanner.org.

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